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In 1859 Sarah Parker Remond enrolled at Bedford College. She studied History, French, Latin, Music, English Literature & Elocution in her two years there. However, her impressive academic credentials are just a small part of her remarkable story...
Born in Salem, Massachusetts 1826, she was 1 of 8 children. She was mostly self-taught, reading books, newspapers and pamphlets that filled her home. In 1835 she was admitted to Salem High School but within a week was barred from attending by the segregationist school committee.
Her parents ran catering and hairdressing businesses and were heavily involved in the abolitionist movement. Writing about her mother she said "her discipline taught us to gather strength from our own souls; and we felt the full force of the fact, that to be black was no crime."
Remond went on to tour the USA extensively speaking for the abolitionist cause and women’s rights. She supported abolition “not because they [slaves] are identical with my race and colour, though I am proud of that identity, but because they are men and women.”
In 1858 she traveled to the UK to speak on these topics. She managed to raise large sums of money and was likely the first women to speak on these topics to a mass audience. In 1859 she enrolled in Bedford College, probably becoming the first black woman to do so.
Writing about the UK and Bedford College she said “I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life. I have been removed from the degradation which overhangs all persons of my complexion... I have received a sympathy I never was offered before."
Whilst at Bedford College she became friends with Elizabeth Jesser Reid, founder of Bedford College. She also became a founding member of the Ladies’ London Emancipation Society and was a signatory on the 1886 Women's Suffrage Petition.
Whilst studying she still found time to tour the UK giving speeches to packed halls. She spoke of the horrors of slavery and the sexual exploitation of enslaved black women, a topic generally deemed too taboo to discuss in public at the time.
Remond moved to Florence, Italy in 1866 and studied medicine at the presitious Santa Maria Nuovo. She married painter Lazzaro Pinto Cabras and went on to practice medicine for more than twenty years. She died in Florence in 1894 at the age of 79.
Little is known about her later life but she is remembered for her passion, bravery and determination. We’re lucky to have her Bedford College student records in our archives and are proud to have been part of her remarkable story.
